Waiting in lines is by far one of the most hated ways to spend your time. Whether you’re waiting for a doctor’s appointment or for issuing your passport, you’re usually stuck in the lobby, glaring at people who are earlier in the line. And if the line is so long that you won’t be up for the next hour, you can bet you won’t get back in time when your number is called out. Armenian startup Earlyone sets out to solve this problem with their queue management system.
Earlyone is actually a spinoff of Limetech – an 8-year-old company that manages the customer flow in service centers. Limetech used ticket dispensers and automated information kiosks to introduce order to lines. Still, people had to wait for their ticket number to be called out. “We have created a solution which will eliminate queues, letting people save time,” said Gevorg Safaryan, the founder of Earlyone and the current CEO of Limetech. He gained profound experience in finance and management while working in TX Systems and running his own company.
Earlyone is a hardware-independent, cloud-based SaaS solution that requires no initial investment from service providers. All they have to do is to implement the Earlyone SaaS. Customers – after downloading a free mobile app – can reserve the most suitable time, see how long they need to wait and what is the number of people ahead of them. All information is updated in real time, so visitors are notified about possible delays. It is also possible to reschedule or cancel appointments. Earlyone works equally well with paper and virtual tickets – the latter enable the customer flow to become paperless and eliminate the necessity of visiting the branch in person before the actual appointment.
The platform provided by Earlyone is global. It means that once a company is listed in the directory, it can add an unlimited number of branches all over the world at no additional costs. “This way we guarantee that any service provider, big or small, with hundreds of service centers or with just one service point, can easily implement and use our solution,” said Safaryan. Service providers also get access to monitoring and statistic tools alongside with extensive reports.
This year, Earlyone won the national edition of the SeedStarsWorld competition in Armenia. The startup received a $50,000 National Grant for developing new software. Their solution is already implemented in 15 companies with total 250 branches, serving over 125,000 people a day. Not bad for a startup that is not even one year old!
